Donald Trump delivered the longest, loudest convention speech in recent memory when he accepted the Republican nomination for president Thursday evening. He made no attempt to “pivot to the general election,” moderate his agenda, smooth over rough rhetoric. Gone was Mitt Romney’s Etch-a-Sketch, tossed into a dustbin with George W. Bush’s Freedom Agenda, George H.W. Bush’s Thousand Points of Light, Ronald Reagan’s Morning in America. Trump was his usual self: brash, boisterous, overbearing, defiant, inimitable, roiling with anger over the state of the country and the corruption, ineffectiveness, and arrogance of the nation’s elite. Trump won’t change, won’t learn, won’t listen, won’t apologize, won’t cavil, won’t conform to the traditions of presidential politics or adhere to the norms of political discourse. He doesn’t care about facts, he wants to overturn the postwar international order, he champions the will to power, he mercilessly attacks opponents. He’s a demagogue in dark suits, electric ties. I can only imagine what he’d be capable of if he were competent.

I watched more of the Republican convention than I had intended to, and this much seems undeniable: The Republican party either has transformed itself into a nationalist-mercantilist party opposed to free markets and a remarkably blasé attitude toward what we used to call the “social issues,” or it is simply willing to impersonate one until the political tides shift. Either way, it was a dispiriting spectacle.

I have been arguing for months that Trump’s hijacking of the Republican Party would come complete with an offer: your principles or your brains on that piece of paper. That’s what’s happening now. Any sign of disagreement – even if you rip Hillary and then tell people to vote their consciences – is seen as a betrayal of The Orange Godking, to be punishable by Moral Responsibility For Hillary.

I won’t be party to the full-scale surrender of conservatism or basic decency in order to avoid causal responsibility for Hillary Clinton. If Trump wants to win, he shouldn’t need me to lie or forego my principles to get him there.

When the meeting reconvened, the RNC had teamed up with the Trump Campaign in a surprisingly organized whipping operation. As our coalition presented its rules, one by one the Trump/RNC alliance voted them down. They sent texts to the committee members telling them to vote no each time a conservative stepped to the mic. One text read, “VOTE NO on ALL Morton Blackwell amendments.” Another text referred to our coalition as “lemmings” for pressing on regardless of opposition.